Joseph Conrad

I wondered how far I should turn out faithful to that ideal conception of one's own personality every man sets up for himself secretly.

I take it that what all men are really after is some form of perhaps only some formula of peace.

Facing it-always facing it-that's the way to get through. Face it!

I am stupid, am I not? What more can I want? If you ask them who is brave--who is true--who is just--who is it they would trust with their lives?--they would say, Tuan Jim. And yet they can never know the real, real truth....

There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies - which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world - what I want to forget.

It was a dark story.

Over the lives borne from under the shadow of death there seems to fall the shadow of madness.